Watch: Billy Bain in “I’m an artist and that’s what I do!”

Pro-in-the-making eschews dazzling career as dancing bear for…art! Like the olden days!

Little Billy Bain. Sweet Billy Bain. Some moons ago, the son of the pro surfing great Robbie Bain, was the finalist in a find-the-great-new-talent contest my magazine ran. He didn’t win, that honour went to the unknown jibber from Cabarita called Chippa Wilson, but he came very close.

I knew a little of Billy’s art, at the time it was quite naive and derivative, but like all things, the kid found his heart’s true desire, his passion, and began to grow it, develop it. Take criticism, move in unexpected directions, live it.

In this, the first of a three-part series by the wetsuit company O’Neill about its lesser-known but nevertheless interesting surfers, Billy’s pivot from surf to art is unpacked, as they say.

“I’m an artist and that’s what I do,” says Billy. “My purpose is to make cool shit.”

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My eyes swim with joy every time I see the one-time most radical surfer in the world, Mark Occhilupo, alive and coherent. There was a time, and I’m hardly talking outside of various confidences, when it seemed that he would soon be floating in heaven alongside Bunker Spreckels and so on.

Now in his fifties with a dozen or so children, Occ has masterfully handled the transformation from spoiled superstar to loved-by-all icon. In this, the thirty-third episode of his Occ-Cast, he brings his endearingly clumsy interview style to the beatific Gerry Lopez.

Gerry talks injury (pierced colon), his home at Mt Bachelor in Oregon where he runs a contest where riders “surf” wind-lips named after famous Hawaiian waves (Ala Bowls, Second Reef Pipe and so on), pioneering G-Land etc.

Like history?

Want to see what dignity in a surfer looks like?

Watch, listen.

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Jamie O’Brien stars in “I’m lying about being a virgin because I use XXL tampons!”

In this episode, Jamie sails his Hobie Cat from Pipeline and down to Waimea. In not-so-short order, he realises the Waimea River’s potential for a slip-and-slide, backflips off the Waimea jump rock, sails back to Pipe, grabs pals and loads eight-thousand dollar Subaru winch into truck, drives to Ace Hardware in Haleiwa, buys a hundred-buck roll of plastic, drives back to Waimea, builds ramp, nails down plastic and hits the damn thing at fifty, sixty clicks.

Watch it and you’ll wonder if the river wasn’t maybe a lil shallow to be somersaulting headfirst into.

“It was definitely shallow,” says Jamie. “I was wondering whether we should do it, should we not, then I was, like, game time. We’re on it. We’re doing it. Next thing y’know, you’re in the air…oh…shit…”

“He just told me, ‘My shoulder’s still fucked!’. This is the Skummy who once drove a car through a parked RV on fire. He’s definitely one guy who makes me step up my game when it comes to land. He’s as savage as it gets. (But) when it comes to water he’s the biggest pussy in the world. He’s like a well put-together Poops. I suggest anything and he has no hesitation.”

The narrative is simple: Mick and Mason go surfing empty good waves in Australia. And, like a good buddy film, the director snatches the pair in conversation of the cosmic sort.

Whether it is confected or not is immaterial.

The pair ain’t prissy.

Words flow.

Mick leads.

Mason sings.

If Rip Curl had a little stiffness in the past, the pairing of Mick and Mason as well as Vaughan and his old boss from Tracks, Neil Ridgeway, shakes off the old muumuu and reveals an arsenal of golden curves.

Prepare a speedball and watch.

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Jamie O’Brien stars in: “God has instructed me to stay in Waco and wait for his sign!”

This episode of Who is JOB finds the gang, including Poopies, who earned his nickname as a thirteen-year-old back in Carlsbad, California, when he was arrested after evacuating his bowels at a busy intersection, at the BSR cable park in Waco, Texas.